Patron (user) Load
Author: Dale Poulter (dale.poulter@vanderbilt.edu) Last updated: 10/16/2006
Background: Vanderbilt has been loading user records into the Acorn system since the system was installed. However, due to system upgrades and staff turnover the older program started to cause problems. In an effort to both improve the usability of the user load and increase the flexibility a complete re-write of the user load process was needed.
Required scripts: master.scr, prepuser.pl, namefix.ex
Other requirements: perl,
The process: The file containing the raw user information (prereg.seq.Z) is uncompressed and compared to the last file loaded. If no difference is found an email is sent to the $notify list and the file is not loaded. If a difference (ANY difference) is found the file is loaded. The process and load steps are:
1. Clean up names (get rid of JR., III, etc.)
2. Send any non-student and non-faculty names (ie alums) to $facrecords
3. Remove any faculty names from the load file.
4. Delete any "Not Enrolled" comments for current users
5. Create a flatuser load file (this is the file actually loaded)
6. Load the file using loadflatuser
7. Expire any users that are no longer registered
Details to get started: Edit the variables at the top of master.scr and prepuser.pl.
Script Details:
master.scr: Runs the show. This script sets up the environment, calls the other two scripts and executes several additional awk commands and api transactions.
namefix.ex: Cleans up the input file so that sorting happens properly. This is just a list of sed commands.
prepuser.pl: This scripts takes the cleanup user file as input and outputs a properly formatted flatuser file to be loaded into Unicorn. If formatting of the input file changes this is the only file needs to be edited.